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Are you up to the Challenge?

My old mate over at Simple Strength, Rannoch Donald has issued a challenge.

At first look it’s a relatively simple task, but with everything Rannoch espouses, it’s simplicity hides a deeper truth.

What he’s asking is that every day, 7 days a week, you do 100 reps of whatever exercise drill you choose.

It could be one exercise, it could be many different exercises. It could be done in a single workout or spread through the day into mini workouts. How you get your daily 100 is up to you.
The “how” isn’t important, the challenge is about the “why”

The why is simple, Rannoch’s home country of Scotland (which is also my home land, although it’s rare I get back these days) now rates number 2 in the Obesity chart. The only country with a greater proportion of obesity is the USA. Although, when I walk around the streets of Dublin, I’m pretty sure we’re not far behind.

The reasons for this alarming rise in the levels of obesity in the population are twofold:

Poor diet.
Eating processed, prepacked garbage. Snacking on sugary food, which by the way includes your “low fat” yogurt and breakfast cereals. The modern idea of convenience food has created a generation who can no longer cook, who no longer recognise a vegetable and are addicted to sugar.

Lack of Exercise.
We used to encourage our kids outside to play. They’d come home covered in mud, bumps and bruises, they’d be tired and ravenous, ready for a plate of meat and veg at the kitchen table. These days kids “play” while slumped on a sofa. A football is controlled by a joystick, whereas my generation controlled a ball with our feet.Your granddad, his dad, and his dad before him, they would go to work and actually do some work. You? I’ll bet you sit at a desk for 8 or so hours. While work used to involve lifting and carrying, modern health & safety laws no longer allow us to lift anything heavier than your handbag. As for the modern exercise methods….well they’re a load of crap, imagine a bicycle that’s bolted to the floor? A machine that allows you to lift weights while sitting down, comfortably? C’mon

So Rannoch came to an epiphany. He jumped out of his bathtub and ran naked down the street shouting “eureka!” (He didn’t, but if you met him, you wouldn’t put it past him!)

He came up with the idea that if you did 100 reps of something, as an extra to your regular workouts, it might replace the lost manual labour. It might balance the sedentary nature of your work. It might stretch the muscles, lubricate the joints, release the good hormones and keep the bad ones in check.

The movement will become your medicine.

Right now, as you read this, Rannoch is collecting workout ideas from top trainers and coaches around the UK and Ireland. I’ve contributed a few already, and can’t wait to see what the others add to the mix. After all, we all have differing styles of training, different backgrounds and experiences. But we all are submitting bodyweight only routines that have a total of 100 reps.
When he has collected them all in, he will put these routines together into a free PDF that will be downloadable from his site.